Death in the Business of Whaling redefines the structure of human survival and healing

By A&E Editor Navya Chitlur

Through resounding and melancholic ballads, emotional vulnerability, depression and grief shine through indie-folk artist Searows’ new album Death in the Business of Whaling. Following his previous EP, flush, and debut album, Guard Dog, Searows sticks to the same, familiar feeling of emptiness and sorrow while also leaning into an almost upbeat anger. Throughout the nine-track Ethel Cain- and Phoebe Bridgers-sounding album, Searows finds a voice for his grief through music in an honest showing of human pain. Imagery of empty homes, nature, and the hunt evoke sensations of loss, while fruits and the sun show the grief in dwindling hope.

Searows’ strength remains in the softness and raw emotion in his vocals. Never breaking past a soft cry, the vocals perfectly encompass depression as a miserable silence, and complemented by the quiet instrumentals, the songs portray tiredness. Breaking voices, repeated lines, and the constant ebb and flow from hard-bearing grief to depression tie the album together as a cohesive project. Right from the first track, “Belly of the Whale,” Searows creates an atmosphere of tentative nostalgia and suffering. Opening the album with the lines “I am not invincible / I am measuring things / I am watching the walls again / Collapse everything” immediately sets the scene to a work genuine and vulnerable, a boy navigating his life through music. He states sad music as his inspiration, drawing from their feeling of catharsis to reflect on his own grief through his breakups, childhood struggles with generational trauma, and isolation and struggle with depression. 

Listeners feel as small as their worst memories by the time they get to “Dirt.” In the instrumental-heavy, faint track, sounding so similar to his single “House Song” Searows gives his audience time to let their emotional turmoil from previous tracks stew and settle in their stomachs. The quiet, melancholy vocals speak volumes, even without the context of his lyricism. He, however, specializes in the specificity of his lyrics. His songs and stories are made real by the vivid imagery of it all — from metaphors of whale bellies reflecting hollowness, or a car driving off the river bridge in “Dearly Missed” to provide listeners with harsh realities of his life. 

Searows tends to write around his struggles, rather than directly about them. He talks about his grief through glimpses and metaphors, paints it with vague stories but hyperspecific, unique imagery. His lyricism leads listeners to generate sympathy for these stories that lack proper context, but have this resounding, complex emotion behind it — listeners understand every emotional struggle buried between the lines of his lyrics. Searows’ internal conflict in shying away from his struggles, unable to approach them in specifics, is clear in his vague lyricism, and in this way, implying aspects of his life rather than outrightly stating them makes his grief stronger. Dramaticization, the fear of being seen, facing his own struggles, and finding comfort while being hesitant to be so honest in his music, creates a layer of vulnerability between the artist and the listener that not a lot of musicians are able to master.

With this vulnerability, his songs read like poetry. Every song blends perfectly into the next, with stages of grief almost chronologically painting the feeling of leaving behind parts of a life and self. “Junie” serves as a desperate plea for second chances and better lives; repetition at the end of the song, complemented by voice cracks and a gradual increase in rigor, shows a genuine, hard-felt sadness, moving listeners emotionally. Every song in the album hits where it hurts, and “Junie” is the track that pries the wound open irreversibly — hitting harder because of the tracks that precede it. 

From what is the most desperate track on the album, Searows transitions flawlessly into “In Violet,” one of the most peaceful tracks, full of acceptance and understanding. Closing the track with the same style of repetition — this time on a hopeful note — Searows creates his album’s climax in these two songs. Light-hearted instrumentals and soft guitar chords are played under the repeated lines “I loved you wrong in the sinking sun / Said I was a God and I’m not sure that you bought it,” eliciting the feeling of finding purpose in a past, sweet nostalgia contradicting the previous harshly-painted memories. In “In Violet,” the penultimate track, Searows finds the perfect place to add a tinge of sweetness to a despairing album. After a series of tracks full of sorrow, the song feels like a breath of air, almost evoking more tears out of listeners than previous tracks.

“Geese” is a perfect closure. Returning to the depressing atmosphere after the last track’s calm paints life as a consistent struggle of grief and love and loss. “Geese” flows right back into the first song in a cyclical story. The lines “I’m runnin’ water, overflowin’ the bath / Somethin’ lost in the center turns the water black,” depict the void still inside him, grief and sorrow turning into a state of melancholic shock. Beginning the album by saying “I’ve been here for a long time / I try and I fail / I am still in the belly of the whale,” and ending with this, Searows doesn’t try to sugarcoat the difficulty of getting over the things that hurt in life. He takes the concept of monotonous repetition feeding into depression and vice versa, ending and beginning on the resounding note that isn’t a reassurance that things will get better, but rather a statement of how life can be an endless struggle, but how people choose to live anyway.

From his debut with Guard Dog, Searows remains the same artist — melancholic voice over soft instrumentals and honest lyricism. His works are ones listeners are left to sit with for a while after listening, grief settling in their hands and minds fully immersed in the atmosphere of his hollow, beautiful music. In Death in the Business of Whaling, Searows revisits multiple aspects of his life and grief, including enduring romantic losses and struggling with isolation or depression, while also leading into new events, generating the cyclical grief theme throughout his discography. In the same heartbreaking, emotional turmoil of the album, Searows once again gifts his audience with brave honesty and genuine art. Searows breaks the barriers between him and his listeners to offer companionship, proving over and over that none of us are alone in grief.

Grade: A